Halfway Through the Woods
by inkheart9459
Summary: A week after Mina's funeral a representative from the law office that helped with her will knocks on Beca's door and hands her a package. Inside is a DVD with Mina's last goodbye and Beca isn't sure she can handle it, but she knows she has to watch anyway because it's the last little piece of Mina she'll ever get.


So, this is angst. Very much so. Like major character death warning angst. Just thought you should know. Also the songs mentioned are from Into the Woods, and blame them for getting stuck in my head for this fic existing. Also, since there has been concern, this isn't in any way related to my other two becommissar fics. This is all on it's angsty own. Enjoy.

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A knock came on the door. Beca blinked slowly, eyes burning. She wasn't quite sure the last time her eyes didn't burn. Had it been days? Weeks? Probably months if she was being honest.

The knock came again and this time Beca turned her head slowly and looked at the door to their—her apartment. Who could it possibly be? No one she knew was in town anymore. All her work friends knew to give her space. She just…she couldn't right now. She wasn't sure she ever could again.

But the knock came a third time, harder, louder, more determined. Beca got the feeling that they weren't going away unless she answered the door. She sighed heavily and pushed herself up, limbs feeling like lead. The walk to the door felt endless and all she wanted to do was lay back down again. Her blankets still held her scent. She could wrap up again and just not. She didn't know what she was going to do when the scent finally faded. Break more things. Cry. She'd done both, what was the difference with doing it again?

She finally made it to the door and she wrenched it open. The man at the door flinched just the slightest bit, but Beca caught it. She was about to tell him to go shove it and stop knocking on her fucking door when he held out a package.

"Mrs. Mitchell, this is from my office, Schneider, Katz, and Adler. It was instructed in the will that this be delivered today, exactly a week after the funeral."

Beca stared at the package for a long moment. She could see Mina's writing clearly on the outside of the package. It was addressed to her. She had to be dreaming. Things like this just didn't happen. This was stuff that happened in movies. No one did this.

Unless it was Mina.

She reached out and took it from the man and held it reverently. "Is that all?" she asked absently, fingers starting to trace the broken loops of writing. Such messy writing for someone so precise. Beca had never been able to reconcile it.

"It is. If you could sign this to confirm that you received it."

Beca reached for the pen and signed without looking. The man nodded to her and left. She stepped back into the apartment, a shard of glass digging into her foot and she drew in a sharp breath. She'd forgotten to put shoes on again. Damn it. She lifted up her foot and found the glass easily enough and pulled it out. She traced over all the other little wounds and grimaced. It hurt, or at least it should. But really, once the glass was out, she didn't feel it. She didn't feel much of anything anymore.

She walked back into their—her room and sat on the bed. Beca turned the package over and over until she couldn't take it anymore. She slipped a finger under the tape and pulled gently. She had to keep this as intact as possible. There would be no more packages like this. No more handwriting that was too messy for a precise woman. No more.

She swallowed hard and bit back a sob. Her throat hurt. Her eyes hurt. She could recognize it, but not feel it, even as her muscles burned and tears gathered in the back of her throat. Beca shuddered and finally got the package open.

The upended package revealed a case, a CD case. It was one of the cheap jewel toned ones that Beca had a hundred million of at the office, littering her desk. She was sure that this one had probably been taken from the stash around the apartment. Her hands clenched into fists as she stared at it. What could it possibly be?

Her hands unclenched, shaking and reaching forward to flip the case over. DVD was embossed on it. So not a CD then. A DVD could mean a video message.

And suddenly Beca had more energy than she'd had in months. She grabbed her computer and tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for it to boot up. She needed to see this now. Like right this instant it should have been in her head already now. But her slow ass computer wasn't cooperating god damn it. She felt more tears prick at her eyes, these of frustration.

Finally, the damn thing loaded and Beca stabbed at the button on the CD drive. She waited for it to open before carefully opening the case and placing the DVD inside. She closed it again and waited another small eternity for the computer to display the video player. She hit the full screen button as it came up and sat back on her bed, waiting again for the message to start.

Her throat closed up when she saw Mina on the screen. She was healthy, skin glowing, hair still silky. It was like the last ten months hadn't happened at all. Beca wished that that was true. She'd sell her soul for that to be true. She pulled in rapid breaths and hit pause. She wouldn't be able to hear anything that Mina said like this. She felt light headed after a minute, but she couldn't stop.

Until she realized that if she passed out then she would have to wait even longer to see what the message from Mina was. That slowed her breathing down and she finally quieted enough to click play again.

"Hello, little mouse," Mina said, smile soft and tinged with sadness. "If you're watching this then the chemo didn't work and I'm sorry I've left you alone, but I suppose it couldn't be helped. I know I fought with whatever I could to stay with you. I love you so much. But right now I don't know how it's going to go, and you know me, liebling. I always have a contingency plan for my contingency plan. This is just one of them."

Beca reached out and started to trace Mina's face gently on the screen with her fingertips. It would be the closest she would get to touching Mina ever again. Another spike of pain ripped through her heart and she doubled over. Maybe it would be the heart attack she thought it was the first few times and take her finally. But it passed as all the others had before.

"I know you, Beca. This will be delivered a week after the funeral. You're sitting in our apartment right now, the place in shambles, on our bed, wrapped in my blankets hoping to eke out the last little bit of my smell. You're not taking care of yourself, but I think a week has given you enough time that you'll be able to hear this and take it to heart."

Mina looked up past the camera. "Sind Sie bereit?" (are you ready)

"Ja," Pieter's voice said off screen.

"Gut." Mina faced the camera again. "The doctors say that the chemo will probably ruin my vocal chords, or at least make me too weak to be able to sing properly. So this might be the last song I sing for you, liebling. Listen to the words. You've heard it a hundred times. It's your favorite song from a musical." Mina laughed softly, bittersweet. "I remember you fangirling over the actress, Emily Blunt, or was it Meryl Streep, perhaps both. They are spectacular. And you forced me to see it. I don't regret that day. Your face during the movie, the wonder…it was priceless."

Tears started to flow down Beca's face. She remembered that day, going to see Into the Woods. Mina hadn't wanted to go because she thought musical movies were a waste and only Broadway shows were truly worth watching. Beca's puppy dog eyes and convinced her otherwise and they had gone. And Mina had liked the movie and they had bought a DVD copy. It was still sitting in the living room at that very instant. Beca sniffled and tried to breath steadily, but she wasn't doing a good job. "I thought the song was so very fitting. And I want you to have this, little mouse." She looked up again and nodded.

Suddenly Pieter was on screen, sitting down beside Mina, hand slipping into hers easily. Beca didn't miss that Mina held on tight enough to turn both her and Pieter's hand white. Her face was impassive, though, through it all. It was so her that Beca choked back another sob.

Music started and a few bars later Mina was coming in, voice strong, vibrating through Beca, stirring so many emotions she didn't know what to feel except for overwhelmed.

" _Mother cannot guide you._

 _Now you're on your own._

 _Only me beside you._

 _Still, you're not alone._

 _No one is alone, truly._

 _No one is alone._

 _Sometimes people leave you_

 _halfway through the wood._

 _Others may deceive you._

 _You decide what's good._

 _You decide alone._

 _But no one is alone."_

Beca felt the words go right through her, tearing more holes in her heart. Mina must have just gotten her diagnosis, and one of the first things she did was make this video, meant to comfort Beca should Mina die. She didn't understand how someone could be so selfless. And she loved Mina even more for it. How was she supposed to do this without her?

Pieter came in, taking Little Red Riding Hood's part. _"I wish…"_

" _I know..."_

Pieter came in again, singing the Baker's part, tenor resonating in the room they'd recorded this in nicely.

" _Mother isn't here now. BAKER(to Jack)_

 _Wrong things, right things..._

 _Who knows what she'd say?_

 _Who can say what's true?_

 _Nothing's quite so clear now-_

 _Do things, fight things..._

 _Feel you've lost your way?_

 _You decide, but_

 _You are not alone, You are not alone._

 _Believe me._

 _No one is alone._

 _No one is alone,_

 _Believe me._

 _Truly..."_

Beca wondered how Pieter felt singing this song. Mina must have just told him right before this was recorded, but as far as she could tell from his face he looked no worse for wear. How in the world? She had…she hadn't been ok for a long while after Mina came back from the doctor. She had only been feeling a bit under the weather, nothing more than perhaps the flu. But it had been so much more than that. Cancer, stage three, verging on stage four. Beca wasn't sure how either of them missed Mina having cancer for long enough for it get that far, but they had. Perhaps because they were young. Cancer didn't happen to young people.

Except when it did.

Both of them came in now, voices blending seamlessly as they always had back in their DSM days and back even farther than that.

" _You move just a finger,_

 _Say the slightest word,_

 _Something's bound to linger,_

 _Be heard._

 _No one acts alone._

 _Careful, no one is alone."_

She shivered hard, music affecting her even more than usual. She had always had visceral reactions to music. It was part of why she wanted to be a producer in the first place. But this was so much different. She choked back sob after sob as the music went on, swelled, note after note hit with perfection. Perfection that she would never hear again. She'd thought a lot about how life wasn't fair in the last week, really ever since the diagnosis. It hadn't made her feel any better, but rage against the world…it was all she had now. That and this DVD with Mina's last song, but that wasn't much of a consolation prize.

Mina sang alone again.

" _People make mistakes. People make mistakes._

 _Fathers,_

 _Mothers,"_

But no mistakes could justify such an early death. Her tears turned angry and she wanted nothing more than to rip the DVD out of her computer and bust it into piece. But she knew that would be the worst thing she'd ever done. And so she reigned herself in, if only barely. There were still plates to smash later if she really felt like it. They could be replaced. This could not.

Their voices blended again.

" _People make mistakes,_

 _Holding their own,_

 _Thinking they're alone."_

Beca thought back to that fateful Worlds competition. She wondered how the Bellas had won that competition. With how good Mina and Pieter sounded on their own, it was a miracle they'd pulled it off. Beca wondered if she would be better off now if she hadn't met DSM. She wouldn't be in her apartment, sobbing over a DVD of a song she loved.

But then if she hadn't met Mina, the best days of her life wouldn't have happened either. She wouldn't have been loved so fiercely that sometimes she felt a bit suffocated, and yet she'd never wanted to run unlike all the other times in her life someone had showed her such affection. She had returned it as well as she could. And that was why this hurt so much, she knew. And as much as she hated it, she couldn't hate it. Not that that made any sense. But nothing did anymore.

" _Honor their mistakes..._

 _Fight for their mistakes-_

 _Everybody makes-"_ Mina's voice soared, coming through the speakers clear as a bell.

Pieter joined her once more, music swelling in the background.

" _One another's_

 _Terrible mistakes._

 _Witches can be right,_

 _Giants can be good._

 _You decide what's right,_

 _You decide what's good."_

Beca's chest felt tight. She was over halfway through the song. It would end soon. She didn't want that. As much as this was painful, while it was playing it felt as if Mina was still here, still alive, still with her. When the video ended the apartment would be cold and lonely again and she just couldn't—just couldn't. A hoarse shriek left her mouth, filled with grief and longing and so many other emotions that Beca couldn't put a name to them all.

" _Just remember,"_ Mina sang.

Pieter echoed her. _"Just remember,"_

" _Someone is on your side."_ Mina closed her eyes as the both sang and Beca saw tears slip down her face. Not once in the entire time that she'd been sick had she cried or raged or done anything. She had accepted her fate from day one, determined to fight, but well aware of the probable outcome. Beca's heart broke even more in that instant. Mina had to have felt something, but she had shielded Beca from it. Of course she had. She had always protected her so fiercely.

Beca reached out and paused the video. She couldn't take anymore at least for a few minutes. Sobs wracked her body, pulling on muscles that had been used to the point of aching, stabbing pain. She couldn't take it. Why? She just couldn't understand why. Maybe if she knew this would be easier. Or maybe if the world wasn't such a bitch and hadn't taken Mina then it wouldn't fucking matter why.

She curled up into a ball and cried until her eyes could produce no more tears and even then she dry sobbed for a while. She felt as if she'd been run over by a Mack truck, but she thought that this was how she was supposed to feel. The love of her life had died. She wasn't supposed to feel like butterflies and rainbows, now was she?

Tiredly she reached out and pressed play once her body was too exhausted to do anything more than sit in a haze.

There was a pause in the singing. Beca's brain slowly put together that it was where Jack and Red sang their accompaniment. Mina had left the space for her to sing with the video. Her breath rattled in her chest. How in the world had she thought of such a thing?

The video continued before Beca could answer, Mina and Pieter taking up the song once more.

" _Our side-_

 _Someone else is not._

 _While we're seeing our side-"_

Again there was a pause. Beca managed to open her mouth and croak out, "Our side," in a rough voice that didn't sound human.

" _Our side-_

 _Maybe we forgot:_

 _They are not alone._

 _No one is alone,"_ Mina and Pieter continued.

" _Hard to see the light now."_ Mina shuddered just the tiniest bit and Pieter's hand slipped from hers and wrapped around her shoulders. Mina leaned into him lightly.

Beca had no more tears to spend, but if she did she would have lost it all over again. Her strong, brave German Goddess. But she supposed even Goddess's had to break sometime. Even in just the smallest of ways.

" _Just don't let it go,"_ Pieter sang, looking at Mina, face soft, eyes watery. He had stood sentry during the funeral, tall and proud, while Beca had cried and cried beside him with the Bellas on her other side. He hadn't said anything, he had just been there, solid as a rock. He had carried on Mina's legacy of protection. But he had to have been just as affected as Beca. She could see that in the little actions in front of her.

" _Things will come out right now._

 _We can make it so._

 _Someone is on your side,_

 _No one is alone."_ They both tapered off as the music ended.

Mina wiped her eyes and sat back. She nodded to Pieter who nodded back. He squeezed her to him once and disappeared back behind the camera.

Another song started and Mina sat straight again, posture perfect for singing.

" _Sometimes people leave you_

 _halfway through the wood._

 _Do not let it grieve you,_

 _No one leaves for good._

 _You are not alone._

 _No one is alone._

 _Hold you to the light now,_

 _Let you see the glow._

 _Things will be all right now._

 _Tell them what you know..."_ The music stopped once more and Mina sat back once more as Mina blinked rather rapidly.

"Beca Mitchell. I love you. More than life itself. No matter where I am right now, I'm with you, and I'll be waiting for you wherever it is we go when we die. There is no way in the world or universe that I could have spent my time on earth better than I did loving and being loved by you. I want you to know that. No matter how things went and how you feel now, I want you to know. I know you're in the darkness, both literally and figuratively right now. You always did like to keep the curtains closed when you were sad." Mina cracked just the tiniest smile. "But I don't want you to lose the light inside you. Don't shut yourself away, liebling. I know you want to, but that's why I changed the lyrics to the last verse. Let yourself live, talk to your friends, more than anything, I want you to be happy."

Beca's breaths were coming in short gasps now. She couldn't. She. How was she supposed to live without Mina and the love that was so vast that she made a video just for this? How could she be happy?

"You aren't alone. Remember that, little mouse. I'll be there with you every time you burn schnitzel, every time you hear the songs DSM sang, every time you think of me, any time at all. And as much as I know I'll be waiting for you, you don't have to wait for me. We're young, and I want you to live your life to the fullest. If someone comes along that makes you happy, I want you to be with them. I will be happy to meet them once this is all over because I know we will have one thing in common, loving you. And that will be enough for us to get along I think." She blinked again, but the tears still slipped out.

"Liebling, little mouse, my everything," Mina's voice broke. "I don't know if I'll get to say goodbye when the time comes, but if I don't, here it is. Goodbye and I love you forever and always. Goodbyes aren't forever and I know I will see you again, somehow, some way."

Beca wailed. And wailed. Until her vocal chords could take no more and she could make no more noise. Mina had not been able to say goodbye. By the end she was so weak speech hadn't been possible. But the second it had been confirmed that her chances of survival were slim to none, Mina had said goodbye in little ways, she had started to reminisce with Beca, bringing up their good times, had told Beca what she wanted her to keep, what she was free to give away, tying up her affairs in a neat little bow so Beca had to do nothing, making sure Beca knew how much she loved her, but Mina had never actually said the word goodbye. There was something final about it that they both avoided. And hearing it now…she wasn't sure how much more her heart could take before it really did just break and stop beating.

Mina looked up at Pieter and then the screen went blank.

Beca put her laptop aside, got up from the bed and walked into the kitchen. Anger, grief, hurt, so many black tinged emotions swirled through her and she couldn't contain them. She opened the cabinets calm on the outside while a storm raged inside her. Beca pulled out the first plate and held it up for a long second. She could see her distorted reflection in the glaze. It didn't look good. Like she was ghost, tired and pale and just so done with the world.

And it set her off. She screamed, threw the plate across the room and grabbed another. She knew it wasn't healthy, mentally or for her bank account later when she eventually replaced everything, but in some way it made her feel just the tiniest bit better. And so plates flew, followed by the rest of the glasses, and all coffee cups but the one Mina also drank from. She wrecked everything, more than she ever had before. And by the time she'd made her way through everything she was even more exhausted, but the hurt remained.

She collapsed to the ground. When would it stop hurting? She laughed loudly, and it sounded like madness. Maybe when she was dead and she finally found Mina. And god knew how long from then that was going to be.

Beca managed to pick herself up from the ground, minutes or maybe hours later. She woke her laptop up and set the DVD to repeat. She watched and watched the video, Mina and Pieter singing, until the words blended together and finally, for the first time in perhaps days, she fell asleep, Mina's singing lacing through her dreams, soft and achingly sweet.


End file.
